The Movement and Culture of African Americans in California
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California State University, Monterey Bay Digital Commons @ CSUMB Capstone Projects and Master's Theses Capstone Projects and Master's Theses 5-2019 The Movement and Culture of African Americans in California Kale Leach California State University, Monterey Bay Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/caps_thes_all Recommended Citation Leach, Kale, "The Movement and Culture of African Americans in California" (2019). Capstone Projects and Master's Theses. 457. https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/caps_thes_all/457 This Capstone Project (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by the Capstone Projects and Master's Theses at Digital Commons @ CSUMB. It has been accepted for inclusion in Capstone Projects and Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ CSUMB. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Movement and Culture of African Americans in California Photo of early African American Settlers Andrew Monroe. Photo from Monroe Collection Kale Leach Africana Studies Senior Capstone Research Essay Professor Vaughan School of Humanities + Communication Spring Semester 2019 Table of Contents Capstone Proposal…………………………………………… 1 Research Essay………………………………………………. 3 Annotated Bibliography………………………………………18 Final Synthesis Essay………………………………………… 24 Current Resume………………………………………………. 27 Senior Capstone Project Proposal Essay Option 1. Kale Leach/ Africana Studies 2. The main focus of my essay would be on African American culture and how it changes through at regions North, East, and West. I chose this focus because I am an African American man living on the west coast and I would like to see how other African Americans culture can differ and compares to mine. 3. The theme for our class is Diaspora which is defined as the disbursement of a group of people from their homeland, Africans first diaspora is when they were taken from Africa during the slave trade, but the second diaspora is a few generations later when slavery was being outlawed or they were escaping, this forced slaves off plantations (one homeland) to new places outside of southern states. 4. My projects primary focus is to compare and contrast African American culture throughout the united states. I want to find out what traditions have been passed down, and how they might differ throughout regions. 5. The African American Diaspora 6. Africans were brought to the Americas against their own will and forced to do unpaid labor for two hundred years. Over these years they were forced to forget the homeland and the traditions they had. Creating new traditions in the south the African American became a new race of people, but with slavery being outlawed, and the south being too dangerous for them to live, many African Americans fled to nearby states. The east coast, west coast and northern states were flooded with Black. Similar to the original African diaspora blacks’ traditions and culture changed. With new cultures in each region, it is time to know what parts of the culture changed and differed. 1 7. When it comes to sources I will have a focus on African American culture, so oral history, journals, and databases will be my main focus. 8. The first step I would take on my research essay would be to narrow down what parts of African American culture I want to do, following I would find the resources that go with it. After gathering that information, I would create an outline. After creating my outline, I would work on my first draft of the paper, Following the rough draft, I would conclude with the final draft. 9. Timeline a. Chosen Cultures- February 25th b. Resources- March 4th c. Outline- March 11th d. Project draft- March 13th e. Final Project- April 22nd 2 Abstract Africans were brought into the new world in the early 17th century, with a majority of slaves being brought in to the United States. These slaves were forced to leave their African traditions and roots behind, and assimilate to white European culture, thus creating the African American or Blacks. African Americans than began to create their own culture and subculture, integrating what they had left of their ancestors’ culture and what they have gained from white European culture. As slavery was fading out of the US Blacks needed a place where they could feel safe and strive in this new society where blacks were now free. They headed in every direction away from the south. Settling in large cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. With African Americans being spread out the culture is being influenced across the country, creating a new African American Diaspora. A large number of African Americans headed west to the New territory of California, and today it shows having the largest population of African Americans outside of the south. African Americans have created their own culture here in California, but its roots still hold deep to their southern ancestors. 3 The Great Migration/To the West Figure 1 The first Great Migration took place in the late 19th and early 20th century and was the displacement of 1.5 million Africans Americans outside of the South. Africans Americans were looking to find salvation as they were freed from slavery and knew they had to get out of the south, because of the honeymoon phase of the reconstruction era was wearing off and racism becoming pronounced in the south, with Jim Crowe laws, lynching and segregation, it was not safe for any African Americans. There were several reasons that African Americans were drawn to the North According to James N Gregory of University of Washington “Jobs in the North were part of the lure, especially as labor shortages encouraged companies to relax customary whites-only hiring restrictions.” The first world war was drawing in the white men, so industrial jobs were opening up, and African American men could fulfill this missing labor force. Major Northern cities like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit’s African America population 4 grew anywhere from 50 to 600 percent. (History) With large numbers of African Americans in these new northern cities living was a problem, even though there were no legal segregation laws, whites found new ways to exclude Blacks. So Black people began to create their own communities within these big cities, for example Harlem, New York, which is famously well known for The Harlem Renaissance. The great migration did not only send Blacks to the North, but some also began to head west. When the second world war started so did the second great migration, with 5 million African Americans leaving the south. Similar to the first there were jobs opening up in industrial cities, but now the west coast was a new destination because of US aircraft plants. Africans Americans were welcomed to these plants, but the south was only becoming more dangerous, so they knew it was better off searching for jobs than staying in racist territory. According to the African American Migration Experience “Western communities, on the other hand, were usually experiencing a large influx of African Americans for the first time, and they arrived as part of a vast shift of the general population. Eight million Americans moved west of the Mississippi after 1940, half of them to the Pacific coast. There were 171,000 African Americans in the West in 1940, but 620,000 by 1945. Between the spring of 1942 and 1945 alone, 340,000 African Americans settled in California.” California was obviously the main western state affected by the second great migration but others like Oregon and Washington. Depending on where they were determined if they prospered and failed, and this was city to city, for example in Oakland after the war Blacks were forced out of the work force again but right across the bay African American men were joining unions and excelling in the work force. 5 Diaspora/ African American Diaspora According to Eliezer Ben-Rafael “‘Diaspora’, a word of Greek origin, designates the dispersal throughout the world of a people with the same origin.” The African Diaspora took place the moment the African slave trade began in the 16th century. Africans were being dropped off all along the New World to work on plantations that produced; sugar, tobacco and cotton, to boost European economy. With Africans being placed in countries that were colonized by different European countries. The slaves assimilated to their colonizers culture while at the same time keeping some of their motherland’s traditions. We see examples of this all across South America, especially within the Caribbean were island to island the traditions are different because of who the colonizers were. The differences that are seen have to do with their religion, music, language, etc. A way to learn about diaspora is to take a something like music from the motherland and watch as is branches off from each country that the people live in, The United States now has rap, r and b, rock, country and South America has Samba, Salsa, Merengue, Bachata, Timba all these styles have influences of African music and this is because of the slave trade. The African diaspora is not the only diaspora to ever take place, it is even to have diasporas take place within families, but since the Africans have been in the United States long enough to spread out across America the second diaspora with the descendants of the African slaves of the first diaspora. There is now a diaspora that takes place with the African American community. Each coast has taken the culture of our ancestors and put their own touch into it. Just like any race in the united states no city, state, or coast have anything in common. With African Americans its different, because most came from the deep south, and within one or two generations ago lived 6 our cultures have carried across the US.